GWEN'S TAKE

Embracing Difference: Telling Other People’s Stories Well

As I write this, we are taking note of the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. I am not a fan of ritual anniversaries nor of celebrating death rather than life. But I do…

Gwen’s Take: When It Helps to Look Inward

This has been a good week for introspection. It can be easy to look at Washington's hijinks and see only the shallow end of the pool. But every once in awhile, before they dive in and hit their heads,…

Gwen’s Take: Is Washington Not As Bad As You Think?

At first I was terribly impressed. While reading this excellent column by my friend Ruth Marcus, I was taken aback by this statistic: Members of Congress report that they work 70 hours a week. What's more, the…

Gwen’s Take: Washington at Work (No, really.)

And they say there's no more bipartisanship in Washington, D.C. Wednesday turned that notion on its ear. A much feared and anticipated snowstorm failed to materialize, disappointing thousands of schoolchildren, but the gray skies and empty streets forced by…

Gwen’s Take: The Blame Game and Other Perplexing Things

The man in my audience at Ohio University this week was exasperated. Why, he wondered, can't Washington get its act together? Why indeed? I can't say I had a good answer. But it was clear that -- in Athens,…

Gwen’s Take: Inside the Supreme Court with Sonia Sotomayor

By Gwen Ifill

There are few places in Washington as grand as the Supreme Court. The staircases sweep, the marble columns soar, and the carved archways inside guide visitors down hushed hallways. The chamber itself, with its velvet drapes, elevated bench and rich…

Gwen’s Take: Happy 100th Birthday, Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks would have celebrated her 100th birthday Monday. The civil rights leader died in 2005. Photo by Associated Press. We know instinctively that not everything we come to believe as history is true. But we want it to…

Gwen’s Take | Rubio, Giffords & Hagel: The Week in Confrontation

By Simon Marks

Government can be dry. Politics can be tiring. The law, while necessary, can be tedious. This is why high drama in Washington can be so much fun. We saw three instances of it this week. And unlike our periodic…

Gwen’s Take | Eight Rows Back: The GOP’s Murky Path Forward

Monday morning in Washington was a chilly place to be if you were a man who imagined you might have been the one facing a Supreme Court justice with your right hand raised. GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan,…

Gwen’s Take: Why Do People Want to Be President?

Earlier this week, I joined with many of my fellow political journalists in a collective gush of surprise and sadness at the death of writer Richard Ben Cramer. It was sad that he died at 62; sadder yet that a…